Just the weeniest hint of hyperbole here, perhaps. Sitting at my bedroom window here in Devon anxiously scanning the horizon with binoculars, the first marauding thug of the New Year has yet to appear. Any moment now, perhaps...Oh, and I'm intrigued by the 'leftist' epithet. I wonder what distinguishes a leftist thug from any other kind of marauding thug? In my limited experience of thugs, marauding or otherwise, political consciousness isn't one of their immediately obvious characteristics....